


Girl Talk

by mercurybard



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Gen, Interspecies Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-26
Updated: 2010-11-26
Packaged: 2017-10-13 09:30:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/135765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercurybard/pseuds/mercurybard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tali asks Shepard for some advise after the debacle on the Alarei.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Girl Talk

**Author's Note:**

> Mass Effect 2 belongs to people who are not me.

"Come on...come on...Mama needs a nice big chunk of platinum so she can upgrade the med bay." Shepherd's fingers flew over the controls for the mineral scanner as she kept a close watch on the jittering lines, carefully nudging the scanner back to where she'd seen the peak indicating a nice, fat load of platinum. One tap.

"Probe away," EDI droned over the ship's intercom.

"Shepard?" The electronized voice sounded tentative.

"Yes, Tali?" Jane glanced over her shoulder to find the quarian engineer standing near the lift, twisting the fingers of one hand nervously in the other.

"Can I speak with you for a minute?"

"Sure, this hunk of uncolonized rock isn't going anywhere. Shut it down, EDI."

"Yes, Commander Shepherd," EDI said as the scanner went dark.

Tali looked too nervous to talk on the bridge, so Shepherd crooked her finger and led her engineer into the little passage that led from the CIC to Mordin's lab. "Are you okay? Recovering from the fever you picked up after you left the Alarei?"

"The fever is gone," Tali assured her. "That's not what I wanted to talk to you about." She fell silent, rocking back and forth a little on her toes. Shepherd just leaned back against the bulkhead and waited. She'd have out with it in her own time. Tali'zorah vas Normandy had more than earned a few minutes of the commander's time. "But it is about what happened on the Alarei. About Mr. Taylor."

Jacob had gone with them to Tali's trial. He'd been getting restless after being left on the Normandy, and besides, she was going to get him comfortable around non-humans whether he liked it or not. "Do I need to hit him?"

Tali laughed and ducked her head. "Not right now, Shepherd, but thank you for the offer. It is nice to know you are looking out for me. When we were on the Normandy..." She looked around. "The first Normandy. There were...rumors about you and Liara."

"We tried to be discreet," Jane admitted.

"It was a very small ship, commander," Tali said, a hint of teasing coming through her processed voice. "What is it like? Being with an alien, I mean."

Did her quiet engineer have a little crush on Jacob? Signs certainly pointed to it. "It's like being with anyone else--people are people no matter if they're white or blue or green. But you have to keep in mind you're dating someone from another culture. There are going to be little things that seem completely weird and things you do that piss them off and you have no idea why." The whole children thing sprang to mind. Shepherd had long ago resigned herself to being childless--her life was too chaotic to take nine months away from it to carry a baby to term--but dating an asari raised the possibility that she could father a child. It wasn't something she and Liara had ever talked about--Liara still had years before she reached the matron stage of life and odds were Shepherd would dead (again) long before than--but the possibility still sat in the back of her brain. "But with you and your suit..." She reached out and laid her hands on Tali's shoulders. "You said that the most intimate thing quarian can do is linked their suits, but with any others species, you'll have to completely expose yourself."

"I wouldn't do anything that might endanger the success of the mission, commander," Tali assured her.

Shepherd shook her head. "I wasn't even thinking about the mission, Tali'zorah. I was worried for you."

Tali ducked her head again. If her face was visible, Shepherd imagined she'd be hiding a blush. As it was, the gesture was just charming like so much else about Tali. "My parents were too wrapped up in their work to have more than one child, but I imagine if I had a big sister, Shepherd, she would be like you."

"You're like family to me too, Tali. We've been through too much for anything else. Now, I believe you were telling me something about Mr. Taylor before we got sidetracked talking about interspecies romance."

"That's just it, commander--since we returned from the Alarei, I think he has been trying to court me. He invited me to watch a holo with him last night."

Shepherd set aside the discordance the combination of 'Jacob' and 'courting' created in her brain and pushed on. "Did you?"

"Yes, we watched a couple of episodes of On the Line."

"That's the asari tech opera you like, right?"

Tali nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, with what happened on Haelstrom, I was several weeks behind, but he caught me up."

"And do you like him or are you just using him for his tech opera vids?"

"He's fun...he makes me laugh, and I find his looks intriguing."

"Jacob is a pretty fine specimen of human male. Take your time getting to know him, and remember, Tali, that my offer to hit him still stands. It’s what any big sister would do.”


End file.
